


What Could've Been

by Katiebug586



Category: Fillmore!
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Angst, Death, Human Experimentation, Mutation, Oneshot, Unethical Experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:20:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24040450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katiebug586/pseuds/Katiebug586
Summary: An AU oneshot for a movie idea that I had.Anza is dealing with the fallout following a rather traumatic event and has to cope with the fact that one of his friends didn't make it out alive.





	What Could've Been

It had all gone oh so, so wrong and Anza didn’t know what to do.

Life seemed to be going just _fine_ for him, but then, he was kidnapped, along with most of the other patrollers, by some mad scientist with a grudge against the patrol as a whole. According to Fillmore, only him, Ingrid, and a few other rookies and minor officers remained, which not only made Fillmore the prime candidate for being the _temp_ Junior Commissioner, also hindered their rescue efforts.

But when the rescue team got there, they were treated with a sight they simply  _ weren’t _ prepared for.

Their friends, Anza included, were turned into  _ monsters, _ literal feral beasts, thanks to the help of scientific experimentation on them. If it wasn't for the remaining safety patrol, they probably would've been stuck like that,  _ forever. _ Alas, as a reminder, physical 'scars' still remained, such as Anza's dragon wings, tail, and scaled hands. But just when it felt like it couldn't get any worse, when almost everyone was saved and fixed, the real kicker was dropped.

_ Vallejo didn't survive. _

Apparently he just _wasn’t strong enough._ _Too weak, too short,_ their captors said, in some condescending tone that made not only Anza’s blood boil but also Frank’s. Had Fillmore not stepped in, it was certain that Frank would’ve lost his life as well, trying to defend his friend’s honor, even if it meant death. He would eventually get the chance to avenge his friend and possible crush, if the rumors were true, and waiting made it all the sweeter.

But here we are, in the present. Fillmore was now the official Junior Commissioner, one of Anza’s friends was gone, and he was stuck with these huge wings, horns, and tail. Speaking of his new tail, it wagged behind him absentmindedly as he tapped away on the keyboard, trying to avoid thinking how weird it felt to type with scaly-claw hands.

The media went absolutely nuts after the entire patrol for a long while, constant questions on what it’s like to be mutated against your will, one of the first known examples of such being possible, though inhumane and already looked down upon.

The answer? Horrible, absolutely horrible. Even though he and his friends were now famous, Anza knew it wasn’t for a good reason. They were famous like how a cryptid like Bigfoot or the Mothman became international sensations. Because they were  _ freaks, _ unnatural amalgamations against the law of nature itself.

But there wasn’t much they could do about it, could they? At least they weren’t automatically sentenced to government testing, though quite a few people from the system popped up every now and then, but why wouldn’t they?

Still, Vallejo should be here, barking out orders like always, someone who was  _ used _ to this position and loved it, not someone who only did it because he knew the patrollers needed him, whether or not he wanted to be in that position in the first place. It wasn’t like Fillmore was a  _ bad _ Junior Commissioner, not by a long shot, but Anza knew how his friend really felt, wanting to stop bad guys instead of feeling forced to live up to the former person in charge, even though everyone knew he’d never be able to, nobody would.

Anza’s gaze shifted over to his partner, who was deep in her work. That or she was doing the exact same thing he was doing,  _ trying not to think about what happened.  _ He had often forgotten he wasn’t exactly the only one alone in this, other people got hurt, somebody  _ died, _ it was just a giant crap-nival of unfortunate events.

He stretched, getting up, and- Oh man, he forgot how heavy his wings felt. While they always felt like a weight on his back, whenever he stood up, they felt like a giant physical burden of pressure, making his posture more hunched than normal and  _ ‘dragon’ _ him down. Bad pun, he knows.

But maybe all his heaviness wasn’t all physical. Maybe part of it was mental, feeling weighed down by not only the trauma of being in such a form but also feeling regret that he, along with others, had survived such an ordeal, when somebody had not.

Survivor’s guilt, they called it.

His relationship with the former Junior Commissioner wasn’t  _ that _ close, but he knew him like how a friend would. Vallejo wasn’t one to get close to anybody, save for  _ maybe _ Frank, but at the very least, he held respect for the patrol and probably thought of them as friends as well, though, given his tough persona, he’d never admit it.

Again, they were all  _ kids, _ the oldest in the group only being around fourteen years old, so why did they act like they were adults all the time? Vallejo was only a  _ kid, _ he didn’t deserve this.  _ He didn’t deserve- _

Anza shook his head, trying to shoo away the negative thoughts. He reached up to fix his hair, trying to avoid touching his sharp and rather long horns. He knew they were there, he just didn’t like being _physically_ _reminded_ that they were there, though. 

Glancing around, he got a good look around at his fellow officers, most of them as messed up, physically  _ and _ mentally, as he was. Ingrid  _ was also _ Junior Commissioner as well, in some weird, co-op kind of deal, since she refused to leave her partner. They were  _ so _ in love, why couldn’t they just see it? While two Junior Commissioners might have been a tad strange, it seemed like change was happening everywhere, so why not change stuff up a bit more?

Tehama also seemed to be bothered by the situation as a whole, though, much like Anza, she worked long and hard instead of thinking too much about it. Bringing irony to the tabby on her shirt, her new ‘form’ looked like a mix of a domesticated cat and one of those big cats that lived in the wild. With feline ears, tail, and pretty sharp teeth, she wasn’t as ‘physically scarred’, compared to Anza and O’Farrell.

Speaking of O’Farrell, he was the  _ least _ distressed by these changes. He might have four arms with only three fingers on them now, but he wasn’t bothered by that at all and was somehow still insanely positive over everything, trying to cheer people up whenever they were down, which was often now. Still, even though O’Farrell wasn’t too phased by his rather insectoid form, with dragonfly wings, those buglike quad arms, and antennae, Anza knew that his friend was still very upset over Vallejo’s demise, even if he hid it with a grin and some dumb bug jokes.

Who wouldn’t be sad?

Vallejo was one of the greatest Junior Commissioners around and they’ve only realized this after their leader was dead and gone. They always thought of him as bossy and demanding, but in reality, he only wanted to  _ help. _ He wanted his team to solve crimes so they could help innocent people out and even if he had been slightly hostile and rude at times, his ulterior motive was good. 

_ And he had to pay his life for that. _

Every now and then, Anza wondered what it’d be like if Vallejo  _ hadn’t _ died and he survived the horrific experiments along with the others. What would his monster form look like? While it was ultimately wishful thinking of what could have been, perhaps there was a universe out there that held such a chance or a universe where this never happened to begin with. If Vallejo was okay in at least  _ one _ of them, that’s all that mattered.

Anza wiped his eyes with the back of his lizard-like hand, trying to hide the tear he didn’t realize was there until now. Shuffling back around, he sat down at his desk once more, repositioning his tail so it wasn’t uncomfortably squished. He let his mind wander off to more important matters like work and solving cases because even if he was in this weird form, mind cluttered by trauma, he’d still do his job, he’d do it for Vallejo. That’s what being a part of the Safety Patrol was all about, after all.

Helping others.


End file.
